Ill-Fated
My name is perhaps Reza, or perhaps Mohammad. Call me Mohammad Reza, it’ll do. My trade and occupation is business, not commerce exactly; well, let both of them go to the devil.
My name is perhaps Reza, or perhaps Mohammad. Call me Mohammad Reza, it’ll do. My trade and occupation is business, not commerce exactly; well, let both of them go to the devil.
First the wretched pandemic, then the indifference of Iranians towards wearing masks, and finally the complete unemployment of us genetic engineers following the birth of Hana, the first cloned goat, during the Ahmadinejad era. These three factors combined to bring about the total extinction of red kangaroos in Australia.
It is seven in the evening on a Sunday, the tenth or eleventh of July, and I am still thirsty. There is a smell of wet sulphur and iron filings. The smell of a damp mop, as though it has been dragged across the filth of the corridor no more than five minutes ago.
As a family, we’ve never liked doctors. You could say we have a blood feud with them. The roots of the hatred go back to the night my great-great-grandfather fell ill and, suspecting he had pneumonia
When the corpse-cleansing ladies brought Mum in and laid her on the slab and pulled back the cloth from her face, Auntie fainted. Nazi, the wife of Gholam the flower seller, rushed off to make a glass of sugar water and brought it back.
There are only five songs saved on his smart phone. One is the one I just mentioned, which plays from his room whenever, according to my mother, “his elephant remembers India.”
No one knew what went on inside. Whenever the door was to be opened, everyone in the building was required to remain in their own rooms; failure to do so brought severe punishment. Even the nurses were forbidden to be out of their rooms.
The man woke still heavy with fatigue. He yawned, stretched, and thumped his clenched fists against his chest. The walls of his small room appeared to have edged closer overnight, as though the space were quietly shrinking around him day by day.
When the treasure hunters of Qara-su Valley brought word of a cave discovered high on the mountain, in which a seated monk had been seen, the whole region was suddenly astir.
The neighbourhood had two public hammams, one for men and one for women. They were run by Ashraf and Qasem the bathkeepers, husband and wife.